Crypto Morning Briefing: Nasdaq Launches 23/5 Trading on December 6; Kim Yo-jong Denies North Korea's Involvement in Binance Hack

Author: TechFlow

Yesterday's Market Updates

French National Assembly Delays Budget Vote Following Rejection of Crypto Exit Tax Proposal

According to records from the French National Assembly and reports by Cointelegraph, the Assembly has delayed the vote on the revenue portion of the 2027 budget. Deliberations on this section will resume on November 3, with 758 amendments still pending discussion.

On October 30, the Assembly previously rejected two amendments that would have included crypto assets in the exit tax, which would apply to unrealized gains when taxpayers relocate their tax residence abroad. One amendment was defeated 27 to 55, and the other 31 to 60. The budget remains under deliberation.

Backpack Warns of Fake Airdrops Impersonating Tokenized Stocks

In an official announcement, Backpack reported discovering fake airdrops being promoted under the guise of distributing tokenized stocks issued by Backpack Securities. These activities are unrelated to Backpack Securities.

Backpack stated that scammers may use legitimate token addresses to make the campaigns appear credible. The platform urged users to exercise caution with unfamiliar links and wallet connection requests, and to verify the standardized addresses of tokenized securities via the official asset directory.

Thailand SEC Seeks Public Feedback on Draft Rules for Digital Asset Derivatives Licensing

According to an announcement from the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulator sought public feedback on eight draft rules for derivatives business operations on October 29, aligning with the inclusion of digital assets within the scope of underlying assets recognized under the Derivatives Act.

The draft outlines licensing frameworks for derivatives exchanges, clearinghouses, and intermediary businesses. It aims to allow digital asset operators to apply for derivatives licenses without establishing new companies, and revises financial reporting standards for exchanges and clearinghouses. The comment period closes on November 28.

Nasdaq Launches 23/5 Trading on December 6, Halting Markets for Just 1 Hour Daily

According to Nasdaq's official website, the exchange will officially launch its "23/5" trading schedule at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, December 6, extending U.S. stock market hours to 23 hours a day, five days a week.

The new schedule adds an overnight session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. ET, which, alongside existing pre-market (4 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.) and post-market (4 p.m. to 8 p.m.) sessions, forms a "global trading window." Trading will run continuously from Sunday at 9 p.m. to Friday at 8 p.m., with a one-hour pause each trading day from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. for system maintenance, corporate action processing, and calendar rollovers.

Regular trading hours (9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET) and opening/closing auction mechanisms remain unchanged, with the closing price still serving as the official benchmark. Trades executed from 9 p.m. to midnight will be rolled into the next trading day, while settlement rules stay the same. For risk management, the SEC has approved related Limit Up-Limit Down (LULD) plan revisions, requiring overnight orders to fall within 20% of the reference price.

Nasdaq noted that the launch date remains contingent on the readiness of the Security Information Processor (SIP) and accompanying SEC rule changes.

China Proposes Full-Lifecycle AI Safety Regulations to Mitigate Risk of Model Loss of Control

According to Bloomberg, Wang Ruomeng, an official at China's National Development and Reform Commission, stated on Tuesday that China is accelerating AI legislation to implement full-lifecycle regulation over AI development and applications, covering stages such as data and computing power. This standard aims to prevent powerful AI models from going out of control and is regarded as one of the most comprehensive AI safety guidelines to date. Regulation will cover major developers including DeepSeek, Moonshot (Yue Zhizhimian), and Alibaba, which are racing to build products that can compete with leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Mercado Bitcoin Hacked for Over $46 Million; Attackers Still Hold ~$9.2 Million in Altcoins

Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain (@lookonchain) reported that Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin suffered a hack resulting in losses exceeding $46 million, with over $9 million of the stolen assets already frozen.

Attackers currently hold the following altcoins, totaling approximately $9.2 million in value, facing potential sell-off pressure:

• 372.99 billion PEPE tokens, worth approximately $1.79 million
• 12,820 AAVE tokens, worth approximately $1.61 million
• 769,950 PENDLE tokens, worth approximately $1.35 million
• 29,830 EVA tokens, worth approximately $1.26 million
• 1.98 million VIRTUAL tokens, worth approximately $1.15 million
• 147,840 UNI tokens, worth approximately $1.04 million
• 2.67 million ONDO tokens, worth approximately $1.03 million

Apple Reports Q4 Revenue of $114.477 Billion, Up 12% Year-Over-Year

According to Apple's published financial statements, revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter ending September 26, 2026, reached $114.477 billion, up roughly 12% from $102.466 billion in the same period last year. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) were $2.10, compared to $1.85 a year ago.

Revenue from iPhones was $57.583 billion, services revenue totaled $31.573 billion, and wearables, home, and accessories generated $8.3 billion. Greater China region revenue amounted to $17.539 billion.

Kim Yo-jong Denies North Korean Involvement in Binance Hack

According to KCNA, Kim Yo-jong, head of the Organization and Guidance Department of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee, denied allegations in a November 2 statement that a hacker group backed by North Korea was involved in the Binance theft, calling the U.S. claims absurd.

Kim accused the United States of linking international cybercrime incidents to North Korea, labeling it a political provocation against the DPRK, and affirmed that the North Korean government opposes malicious activities in cyberspace.

Anthropic Adjusts Claude Code Prompts to Restrict Cloning Existing Games

According to The Verge, Anthropic has updated the system prompts for Claude Code on Opus 5.5 to guide the tool away from replicating specific third-party games.

Anthropic's Addy Osmani stated that the company added two sentences to the prompt after discovering that using Claude to infringe on intellectual property violates its acceptable use policy. He clarified that original games, genre-inspired games, and projects built with user-owned designs and assets should continue to function normally, and the company will keep refining the prompts to strike an appropriate balance.

Today's Market Overview

Recommended Reading

South Korea HBM Stack Surges to $4,000: A Get-Rich-Quick Scheme by Shenzhen Brokers in Their 20s, Hidden in Low-End Chips

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/35071

This article exposes a gray smuggling chain of HBM memory chips connecting South Korean chip foundries, Hong Kong transshipment hubs, and underground workshops in Shenzhen. Operators control shell chip design firms to co-package high-end Samsung/SK Hynix HBM 3E with low-end processors that have virtually no commercial value, disguising them as ordinary low-performance chips for export. They then ship them through Hong Kong to mainland China, finally extracting the HBM die units using high-temperature decapsulation techniques. Driven by AI computing demand and export controls, the black-market price for a single HBM 3E stack has surged from a few hundred dollars a year ago to around $4,000. An AI training chip requires 6 to 8 stacks of HBM, meaning mere procurement costs on the black market could increase by $24,000 to $32,000 per chip. The article also highlights how a broker in his 20s in Shenzhen leveraged supply chain connections to achieve rapid wealth accumulation through matchmaking trades over three years. However, as more participants enter, regulations tighten, and domestic storage alternatives advance, this gray arbitrage chain faces contraction. The AI computing arms race has not only driven up chip prices but also spawned an underground supply network exploiting export control loopholes.

Do U.S. Stocks Always Rally After Midterm Elections? Historical Data Shows 11 Consecutive Green Years with an Average Gain of 13.7%, but Votes Aren't What Really Drive the Market

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/35060

This article reviews U.S. stock market performance following midterm elections over the past 40 years: across 11 midterms from 1982 to 2022, the S&P 500 rose in every subsequent year, averaging a 13.7% gain. Periods with divided government—where different parties control the White House and Congress—fared better, posting a historical one-year average return of roughly 15%, compared to 11.5% under unified party control. The article argues that checks and balances reduce uncertainty around radical policies and regulatory surprises, but elections themselves aren't the core drivers of market trends. Instead, the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy, market liquidity, corporate earnings, AI capital expenditure, and global bond yields are the true determinants of long-term U.S. equity performance. While historical win rates are impressive, investors should not treat election cycles as guaranteed bull signals; macroeconomic conditions and corporate fundamentals ultimately dictate how far a market rally can go.

Podcast Notes | Conversations with the Zcash Core Team: Breaking Through 50k TPS and Post-Quantum Defense, Evaluating ZEC's Long-Term Growth Thesis

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/35049

This article compiles a comprehensive breakdown from Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe and lead researcher Dev Ojha regarding the project's future technical roadmap. The team is restructuring the network using the Tachyon architecture, recursively compressing millions of zero-knowledge proofs into a single proof, aiming to boost network data throughput to 100 MB/s, or roughly 50,000 TPS. Additionally, Zcash plans to introduce Private Information Retrieval (PIR) to address slow light wallet synchronization and query leakage, while staging defenses against quantum computing threats through quantum-recoverable signatures, transparent transaction pool upgrades, and lattice-based cryptographic proof systems. On governance, the team aims to incentivize direct holder voting to reduce reliance on centralized development funds.

GPT-6 Astra Directly Rewrites Qwen Weights, Math Capabilities Surge Sixfold: Is the Era of "Neural Network Gene Editing" Here?

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/35047

This article highlights a new breakthrough by an MIT research team: enabling GPT-6 Astra to directly read and modify the neural network weights of the open-source model Qwen3.5-0.8B. Without retraining, gradient descent, or additional training data, tweaking just 0.016% of the parameters boosted its MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1%, while GSM8K results climbed from 13.8% to 67.1%. Researchers dubbed this method "weight-space programming," effectively allowing a strong AI to inspect another AI's internal architecture, pinpoint performance bottlenecks, and apply precise fixes. Experiments also demonstrated capabilities like identifying game models, directly writing game strategy networks, and patching autonomous driving controllers. However, the researchers emphasized that this breakthrough primarily removes obstacles hindering the model's existing capabilities rather than creating new ones from scratch, and it has only been validated on small models thus far. The truly notable shift is AI evolving from merely using and training models to directly rewiring them, which could revolutionize future AI development and optimization while introducing recursive self-improvement security risks.